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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting (Kesten, 2011). In a democracy, a government is chosen by voting in an election: a way for an electorate to elect, i.e. choose, among several candidates for rule. In a representative democracy voting is the method by which the electorate appoints its representatives in its government. A vote is a formal expression of an individual's choice in voting, for or against some motion (for example, a proposed resolution), for a certain candidate, a selection of candidates, or a political party. A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election, and it may be a pieces of paper or a small ball used in Secret Voting (Which is a voting method in which a voter's choice in an election or a referendum is anonymous,, forestalling attempts to influence the voters by intimidation, black-mailing and potential vote buying). A secret ballot has come to be the practice to prevent voters from being intimidated and to protect their political privacy. Voting usually takes place at a polling station; it is voluntary in some countries, compulsory in others, such as Argentina, Australia, Belgium and Brazil (Armstrong, 2010). In a representative government, the word voting generally implies an election, which is how an electorate selects the next candidate to lead the government. A vote (singular) refers to the act of an individual casting their vote to express their support for a
particular political party or a particular candidate who is running for an office or a particular policy that is trying to be introduced e.g. A referendum. The majority if not all companies operate a 'secret voting' system which uses at least a minimum amount of secrecy by taking steps to make sure that the voter's identity is kept secret. This is done by anonymous voting (no names on ballot paper) at polling stations which are opened all over the country on election days (William, 2008).
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The traditional method of conducting elections manually poses a number of problems which need to be addressed and handled effectively. These drawbacks are outlined below: In the manual registration process, rigging is possible There is no privacy of voter's choice as the candidates that the voters want to vote for can easily be known. Voters can be influenced on the voting site to choose to vote for another candidate from the one that they originally wanted.
1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study will cover the development of a web based electronic voting system which will be able to perform the following functions: Allow for the registration of eligible voters Enable registered voters login to the system to vote Allow for the registration of candidates
Chapter Two discusses the literature review which contains the analysis of the workings and operations of the presently existing systems and the review of other related findings. Chapter Three discusses the methods used in the design process, which includes information gathering, fact- findings and sourcing for materials, which forms the foundation that explains how the software will be developed. Chapter Four describes the implementation of the software, testing and results. This chapter discusses the steps that were taken to get the program running Chapter Five is a summary of discoveries about the newly designed system, recommendations, suggestions and ideas for further work.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we will discuss on literature reviews the traditional voting system, the way it is used to conduct the election as well as the issues with the traditional system that led to the inspiration to develop an online application for this purpose. This chapter will also shed light on what an online voting system is and the reason to develop such application.
2.2 TRADITIONAL VOTING SYSTEM
The general elections are conducted using the Open Secret Ballot System where the voter’s chosen candidate is known to him/her only. This is done by marking the ballot behind a polling screen/booth secretly (or applying the finger print in a circle/space which corresponds to the candidate of choice); the voter then places the ballot paper in the ballot box. Elections in Nigeria are conducted by the independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the body was established by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to among other things organize elections into various political offices in the country.
2.2.1 STEPS
These are the six steps that are carried out in the Open Secret Ballot System electoral procedure. These are: Voter Registration: A Nigerian citizen who is eligible to vote goes to his polling unit to register. The citizen would have his/her picture taken and his/her details captured.
electronic voting has eased the way voting is conducted. (Jefferson,
2.3.1 CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES
There are so many e-voting technologies that are being used to conduct elections. Some of these technologies are: Electronic ballot boxes: This is the most recent e-voting machine that is been developed in India by the Bharat electronics limited. India has developed a new electronic voting system device. It has been built by the Bharat electronics limited. It cost them $200 million. It was developed because of the raucous affairs in the election with hundreds of people killed in the fights between the rival political parties. In the past in India, the entire polling stations used to be hijacked. And the ballot boxes were used to be stuffed by the bogus votes. These new electronic ballot boxes are suitcase sized plastic box. The box hold a battery operated machine. The election commission of India has planned to use 1 million of these machines in India in the next general elections. The manufacturer said that if these machines are hijacked, it can be replaced immediately by the new one. (Buldas et al, 2004) Mechanical Lever Machines: The mechanical lever machine is a machine with the levers having names of the choices assign to them. They were also known as Myers Automatic Booth. The mechanical lever machine was first used in Lockport, New York in 1892. In four years time it was
introduced in the city of Rochester, New York. Nearly half of the Americans used these machines in 1960. The way these machine works was very simple. The machine used to have different levers each with one of the choices. Voter pulls the lever to indicate the selected choice. The privacy curtain closes after the voter enables the machine. Once the voter makes his choice by pulling one of the levers, the voted lever returns to its original position. The counting mechanism is great in these machines. By 1930, lever machines had been installed in virtually every major city in the United States, and by the 1960's well over half of the Nation's votes were being cast on these machines. (Buldas et al, 2004) Punch card System: In Punch card systems voters are given a card or a clipboard sized device. The voters punch those cards with the punch device opposite to their candidate or ballot issue choice. After the voter punches the card, he puts the card in a ballot box or computer vote- tabulating device (Jones, 2009). Mark sense (Optical Scan): In Mark sense or optical scan systems the voter is issued a ballot card with the name of the candidates' printed on them. Next to the candidates name there are empty rectangle, circle or oval. So the voter fills the empty shapes and put the ballot card in the box or feed it in the computer tabulated device. The computer reads the dark marks on the ballot card. The shape that has the darkest mark is selected as the choice. (Schneier, 2004)
2.4.1 STAGES OF ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM
PROCESS
The general online voting system has been divided into six phases (Zissis, 2011). These are: Registration Authentication Voting and saving the votes Managing the votes Counting the votes Auditing In the first phase of the registration the voters are registered and given the login details to log into the system In the second phase the voters are authenticated by the system and verified if the voter has the right to access the system In the third phase the voters cat the votes and the system saves the votes into the system In the fourth phase votes are managed, sorted and prepared for the counting. In the fifth phase the votes are decrypted and counted. In the sixth and the final phase the system checks whether he eligible voters voted and if their votes counted for the final tally. The process of online voting system can be divided into three main components of the infrastructure. These are
- Voter Applications
- Network Server
- Back-office
Voter Application: It is the web application the can be accessed by the voters on their personal computer for casting the voter. It is connected to the Network sever using the cryptographic techniques. Network Server: It is the online server that provides the voter necessary interface for casting the votes. It is connected to the Back-office sever where all the votes are collected. Back-Office : It consists of the server that saves all the votes from the network server are transferred, saved and counted.
2.4.2 ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
Online voting has been used in different countries on the trial basis. The two biggest projects on online voting system were developed in Estonia in 2003 and in the United States of America in year 2004. The American online voting project was named as SERVE (The Secure Electronic registration and Voting Experiment) and was initiated to implement in the 2004 primary and general elections. Estonian online voting project was initiated to implement it in the local government council's elections in year 2005. Whereas SERVE system was initiated to implement in the year 2004 primary and general elections (Estonian National Electoral Committee, 2006) Estonian e-voting system : The Estonian voting system is implemented from the sixth day up to fourth day before the elections. The principles of the Estonian system were:
- The voters were able to revote. In this case only the final vote is counted and the older vote is deleted of the system.
Estonian system has national public key infrastructure but the SERVE system does not have it. In the Estonian system the voter signs the encrypted. It does not happen in the SERVE system. In the Estonian system the votes are encrypted when saving into the votes storing server whereas in the SERVE system votes are not encrypted. The votes counting server in offline in the Estonian system when the poll is closed but in SERVE system it is online. Estonian system has log file system but SERVE does not have it. In the UK, Bristol City Council allowed residents to vote by phone, internet or post on the level of council tax for 2001/02. 3, votes (2.7%) were cast over the internet. Croydon Council also held a similar referendum, where 2,693 votes (3.4%) were cast over the internet In Austria, e-voting is not a first priority of the government. A first (legally non-binding) test of online voting was undertaken in parallel to the Student Union election at the WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration), in May 2003. A prototype developed at the WU Vienna by Prof. Prosser and his research group was used. This online voting system makes use of the Austrian electric national Id. The way it works was that Before Election Day the voter applies for the issuing of an electronic voting token that is saved on the electronic National ID Card. On Election Day the voter to prove his right to cast a vote supplies only this electronic voting token (Estonian National Electoral Committee, 2006).
REFERENCES
Kesten C. Greene and J. Scott Armstrong and Randall J. Jones, Jr., and Malcolm Wright (2010). "Predicting Elections from Politicians’ Faces" Andreas Graefe and J. Scott Armstrong (2010). "Predicting Elections from Biographical Information about Candidates" D. Jefferson, A.D. Rubin, B. Simons, D. Wagner. A Security Analysis of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE). 2004. http://www.servesecurityreport.org/. 21.01.2007. Buldas, P. Laud, J. Piirsalu, M. Saarepera, J. Willemson. Rational Choice of Security Measures via Multi-Parameter Attack Trees. In Critical Information Infrastructure Security First International Workshop - CRITIS 2006, LNCS 4347, pp. 235-248, 2006. Douglas W. Jones, Early Requirements for Mechanical Voting Systems, First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for E-voting Systems, Aug. 31, 2009, Atlanta. Schneier, Bruce (September 2004), openDemocracy What’s wrong with electronic voting machines? Hardy, Michael (Mar. 3, 2004). California nixes e-voting. FCW.com.
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
3.0 INTRODUCTION
This project is aimed at providing an Online Electronic Voting System that will enable educational establishments in the efficient management of student union election voting. The main focus of this chapter will be the analysis and design of the proposed Online Electronic Voting System.
3.1 ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM
Candidates interested in contesting for the various positions in the Union will have to register in the Faculty Student Union Office for the particular post that they are interested in contesting for. This is done by collecting paper forms and filling them with the required information. The interested candidate’s names and the positions that they are contesting for are then put on display for the voters to acknowledge. On the day of the election, ballot boxes are placed in the allocated venue for the electoral process with each ballot box representing a particular post for contention in the Union. Voters then line up to take their turns in casting their votes for their preferred candidate by dropping a piece of paper containing the name of their candidate into the ballot box. After the voting exercise is over, the boxes are taken into the inner chambers and then each box, representing a position to be held, will have its papers sorted according to the names of the candidates. The total number of votes for each candidate is
recorded and the candidate with the highest number of votes id registered as the winner for the position contested for. Once the vote count is done, the results are readout to the voting crowd and the winners are reveals along with the number of their votes.
3.2 PROBLEMS AND WEAKNESS OF THE EXISTING
SYSTEM
The current system poises a number of problems;
- In the manual registration process, rigging is possible
- There is no privacy of voter's choice as the candidates that the voters want to vote for can easily be known.
- Voters can be influenced on the voting site to choose to vote for another candidate from the one that they originally wanted.
3.3 IMPORTANCE OF THE NEW SYSTEM
Through the implementation of an Online Electronic Voting System, the following objectives can be achieved.
- Prevention of rigging of ballot boxes on the election venue
- Voters can vote anonymously
- Votes cannot be influenced by others while voting online
- The user authentication process of the new system ensures that only eligible voters (students) are allowed to vote.
- The results of the votes can be view in real time.
3.5 DATABASE TABLE STRUCTURES
Below are the descriptions and structure of the database files to be used by the system: User: This database file will contain the information about the users of the system. User structure: S/ NO
FIELD NAME DESCRIPTION FIELD
SIZE
DATA
TYPE
- ID Unique identification number 30 Number
- Username Username for accessing the system 50 Text
- Password Password for accessing the system 50 Text
- Role Role played by the user 30 Text Candidate file: This database file will contain the information about the candidates.
Candidate table structure: S/ NO
FIELD NAME DESCRIPTION FIELD
SIZE
DATA
TYPE
- ID Unique identification number 10 Integer
- Name Name of candidate 50 Text
- Post Post contested for 50 Text
- Votes Votes acquired 10 Integer Student file: This database file will contain the information about the students. Student table structure: S/ NO
FIELD NAME DESCRIPTION FIELD
SIZE
DATA
TYPE
- ID Unique identification number 30 Number
- Name Student Name 10 Text
- Sex Gender 10 Text
- Pin Pin Number 10 Text
- Department Department 10 Text
- Faculty Faculty 10 Text
- RegNumber Matriculation Number 10 Text Votes file: This database file will contain the information about the votes cast. Votes table structure:
